I spend all day on my feet try to recruit more people to the society, in a room with so many other people doing the same, and all the freshers we're trying to recruit so it's 90 decibels all day, and then you get home and find there's water coming through the ceiling of the people underneath.

There are a few problems you can't solve just by sitting and thinking.

Bee-Dubya, Mountain Home, Idaho is home to Mountain Home Air Force Base. I drive past it on the way to Boise on I-84. Sometimes you can see 'em flying A-10s, the best plane in the US's arsenal in my opinion.

This trivial lust of numbers! How Can ever mind explain it now? How justify, how rationalize This blinding of the soul-owned eyes To turn the lust of vibrant living Into a rusty, numbered giving Of little for but little thunder Clouded in some mere giant number! What hollow acclaim! What snippet-love! That all the gifts of saints above Should cast off be, thrown out to winter In quest of an idle integer. Now will the days by numbers ruled Turn on your heart and with a cruel Admonishment of hurrying time Reduce it to a numbered line. Avoid, oh flee! This awful fate, I pray thee e'er it is too late! And think of the name on this poor slate, With best regards, 8-0-0-8.

HAD we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side 5 Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. 10 My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, 15 But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, Lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. 20 But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, 25 Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: 30 The grave 's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires 35 At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power. 40 Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun 45 Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Gee, there's a "Mountain Home" in Arkansas too. Heck, there's probably one in damned near every state that has mountains. But what about states where there are no mountains? Should Kansas have a "Big Flat Expanse of Cornfields Home"? Or should Florida have a "Fetid, Cottonmouth-infested Swamp Home"?

I don't understand why anyone would want to go through all the trouble of developing little robots that do nothing but march across M&Ms. Seems like there are a lot more important uses to which they could be put. Like marching across Skittles or Jujubees.

Is the world ready for robotic M&Ms? Would you eat one, have it pull itself back together, march back out, and let you eat it all over again? Would you need only one M&M in your whole life? Will all of the robotic M&Ms be different colors, a uniform gray, or will each one be made up of specks of color, rather like a Seurat painting? And what happens if all of the, say, red robots go on strike -- would red M&Ms just sit there? And if you at the robotic M&M and had a, well, an intestinal blockage, could all of the robots get together and push? And could they be inserted from the other direction as well?

In other news, something really worth seeing if you can find the right M&M:

RESEARCHERS BUILD WORLD'S SMALLEST MOBILE ROBOT, September 14 In a world where "supersize" has entered the lexicon, there are some things getting smaller, like cell phones and laptops. Dartmouth researchers have contributed to the miniaturizing trend by creating the world's smallest untethered, controllable robot. Their extremely tiny machine is about as wide as a strand of human hair, and half the length of the period at the end of this sentence. About 200 of these could march in a line across the top of a plain M&M.

Oddly enough ALL the references to that telling phrase are from the Mudcat; this is very interesting. In his book The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins discusses the actual numerical probabilities of a room full of monkeys on typewriters actually composing a single line of Shakespeare; he dramatically contrasts two different methods, one in whoch anything worth keeping is fed back into the system, and one in which every iteration is as random as the first.

Now, there are billions of nodes and humans connected tot he Internet; so it is nothing close to miraculous that this one phrase, made up of common words under normal grammar, has not appeared anywhere in Google's reach other than the immediate karmic influence radius of MOAB.

It is intuitively clear that MOAB has succeeded in penetrating the black wall of Unlikelihood that governs the living universe and has somehow tumbled on the combination to open that door. If we can only isolate what our successful action was, we could turn the whole damn universe inside out in terms of probabilities, make wishes into horses and vice versa, and do other miracles.

YOu want us to discuss contrasting lengths in the toilet? That is nauseating! The mental equivilant of the sound of the flush of a distant toilet - slightly off, but not irratating enough to cause real disgust...

We did more than our share to contribute to the Google Mudcat spatula connection out there, so no one HERE is a slacker. I think I echoed the flushed phrase a time or two, asking about it's appearance (I didn't see it in the search, but maybe it was in one of those subsets).

Just thought I'd give everyone an update. On September 5th, the number of Google results for the exact phrase "flush of a distant toilet" was one if excluding "very similar results" or three if including them.

Now it is up to seven if "very similar results" are excluded or thirty if they're included. That's a ten-fold increase in a mere nine days!

Those of you who have been assisting in our endeavor to flood the WWW with "the flush of a distant toilet" are to be congratulated. Those of you who haven't been helping are a bunch of slackers and need to get busy! Can't go through life letting other people do all the work for you, you know.

Don't get me wrong -- I cut my eye-teeth on Bartholomew Cubbins and his hats and his oobleck. Loved 'em.

But our family has Go Dogs Go memorized, because we read it so many times twenty years ago!! And, excuse me, but it captures the essence of some very complex prepositions, colors and social interactions, the courage to say "I do not like that hat!", and the notion of having a party in a tree, all of which are beyond the pale of normal suburban thinking. It is not the dogs who drive SUVs in suburbia, but their sons.

well - while I consider Go, Dogs, Go! to be a fine book - it is just too much of a white middle class suberban message for my tastes to be classed as truly great.

I think AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET or other Suess Classics, such as If I ran the Zoo have a much wider base with which to appeal to the masses - and as such more life lessons to be taught.

seriously - I think any child that grows up without being exposed to Suess is leading a deprived life

Dang, that Rapaire can sure spin 'em!! I am glad them twins didn't get any futhah dandling. It was clearly getting out of hand, so to speak. Now as to Green Eggs and Ham, why it is a perfickly fine book, for them as pursue Europen philosfies, like them as Kant teaches cant with.

But if you want a pure-dee AMURICAN philosophy, as is fot for the fine halls of Bowdoing or the Wiscasset Vocational Institute, why you don't want none of that loosey-seuusy stuff. You wantGo, Dogs, Go!. There's a book will philosophize the chrome right off a tail hitch. All-AMurican, fillosofickally, too.

Ma sister was ruint by one of them transducers. They was hayin' an' he went an' sweet-talked her and transduced her right there in Uncle Jem's south 40. Then he went ta git some more water and jist kept right on walkin' and it's good that he did 'cuz Ma was almighty pissed about it an' Pa was fit ta be tied too. Us boys got the shotguns all loaded up and set out after him whilst Ma an' Pa tried to git that silly grin offen Sis's face.

We caught up with him in the Pubic Liberry in Dillsboro an' we wuz gonna fill him so fulla holes that they cud sit him outside an' use him fer a fountain, only the liberry lady shushed us up an' said that we cud only shoot him in the liberry iffen we used silencers. We went out to git some an' when we got back that dirty transducer wuzn't there no more. We figgered out that he'd done a flit, cuz the copy of "Green Eggs And Ham" that he wuz readin' wuz still sorta floatin' in the air.

Anyway, brother Ez snagged it and read some of it an' Ez is now teachin' fillosophy in one of them big-name fancy-shmancy Eastern colledges like Bowdoin er Stanford er St. Dismas. He come home last Christmas, back to the farm, and whilst he wuz bouncin' Sis's twins on his knees and goin' "Kitchy-Koo" to 'em he owned up that that there book opened up his eyes ta fillosophy and got him the job he's got as a perfesser at that college. Anyways, that was jist afore Sis smacked him a good un fer kitchy-kooing them 20 year old twins. We always kinda wunnered what woulda happent iffen Ez had read all of that there book.

A previously-unknown zinc oxide nanostructure that resembles the helical configuration of DNA could provide engineers with a new building block for creating nanometer-scale sensors, transducers, resonators and other devices that rely on electromechanical coupling.

New nanohelix structures could provide engineers with a new building block for creating nanometer-scale sensors, transducers, resonators and other devices that rely on electromechanical coupling. (Image courtesy of Zhong Lin Wang)

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Related section: Matter & Energy

Based on a superlattice composed of alternating single-crystal "stripes" just a few nanometers wide, the "nanohelix" structure is part of a family of nanobelts -- tiny ribbon-like structures with semiconducting and piezoelectric properties -- that were first reported in 2001.

The nanohelices, which get their shape from twisting forces created by a small mismatch between the stripes, are produced using a vapor-solid growth process at high temperature. Information about the growth and analysis of the new structures will be reported in the September 9 issue of the journal Science.

The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, NASA Vehicle Systems Program, U.S. Department of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"This structure provides a new building block for nanodevices," said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "From them we can make resonators, place molecules on their surfaces to create frequency shifts -- and because they are piezoelectric, make electromechanical couplings. This adds a new structure to the toolbox of nanomaterials."

With their superlattices composed of many near-parallel single-crystal stripes each about 3.5 nanometers wide and offset about five degrees, the nanohelices are very different from the nanosprings and nanorings of zinc oxide reported by the same research group in Science in 2004. Nanosprings are composed of a single crystal whose shape is governed by balancing the electrostatic forces created by opposite electrical charges on their edges with the elastic deformation energy of the entire structure.

I just knew it was a good idea to save all those tubes of zinc ointment my mother made me take to the beach in the Fifties which I wouldn't actually use because they made me look dorky!! Now I can found a nano-empire!! Yayyyyyyyyyy.

A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And as he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts....

James Allen

This great truth is the inherent Fuel of the MoAB, I believe, and characterizes all who post here.

But you must be sure to get the unexpurgated versions. In those you will learn such Ultimate Secrets as the truth of the relationship between Bartholomew Cubbins and the Lorax, what happened to Cindy Lou Who when she grew up and moved to the Big City, why the Grinch REALLY "stole" Christmas, and the Secret Meaning of Yertle's name -- to name just a few things.

You can obtain unexpurgated versions only from the Frater Amos J, son of the notorious "J" who wrote The Sensuous Woman and who is Keeper of the Secret Tracts and Texts for the Temple of the Golden Globes. There is no cost, but you must pay shipping and handling.

One Fish, Two Fish and Hop on Pop are the Cliff Notes versions of the secrets of the Universe, and it's accompanying key. For the full text, one must read The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and it's companion text Bartholomew and the Oobleck.

NOW you've done it! The cat's out of the bag. The anchor is aweigh. The beans are spilled.

Anyone who can read One Fish Two Fish can now understand Hop On Pop. And when they understand it they will Know. They will have achieved, they will fathom, apperceive, cognize, comprehend -- they will prize their knowledge of the ultimate, they will have the knack, they will be sophic.

Hop On Pop contains within it all the secrets of the Universe. It contains the Key to the Davinci Code, it explains how to turn lead into gold, it teaches the secret of perpetual motion, provides Science And Health With A Key To The Scriptures, details where Jimmy Hoffa went, finds the Lost Chord, opens the Seal of Solomon and lots of other neat-o stuff, if you know how to read it.

I have just spoken with a Special Agent of the FBI who is also a library patron (he brings his kids and his "fave book" is Hop On Pop). Anyway, he told me that the detainee TPDs have "nearly all volunteered" to be Special Household Informers for the Bureau and will know by the abbreviation "SHITPD," which he considers unfortunate but which was foisted on them From Above. Their primary mission will be to infiltrate the households of known, unknown, suspected, and unsuspected aiders and abettors of Those Who Would Destroy Western Civilization As We Know It (TWWDWCAWKI, pronounced "Tweedwecawky," which is actually a small town in rural New Jersey). He would have told me more, but it's all very, very hush-hush. In fact, he was run over (several times) by a black car driven by men in black (MIB) in our parking lot.

It has come to our attention that many otherwise good souls have taken to verbally abusing the poor soiled doves of the SSSTT. I beg you to remember that though many defame their characters it is not the fault of these poor midguided ladies that the animal instincts and urges, the lusts and wordly appetites of others in our society that leads to their suffering at the hands of their fellows.

Indeed, consider their suffering, for it is the rare day when one of these lambs of sin does not have virtually her entire insides torn from her, rent asunder and discarded.

Funny you should mention that, Rapaire. There's been quite a lack of TPD's here in Oz lately. I wouldn't be at all surprised if ASIO or somebody was keeping the Australian ones in the detention centres in Oz. No wonder they won't let us in to their high security areas! There could be TPD torture chambers in there or anything!

The Socity for the Serene Survival of Sexy Tiny Toiletpaper Terrorists has informed me through their legal agent that you will be hearing from their law firm in the morning, Rapaire. This transmittal of vicious rumours on your part about the FBI rounding up their membership is purely slanderous. No such thing ever happened; the SSSTT has always been supportive of the FBI, providing intelligence and data from an array of miniscule sensors in their petticoats. All over the English speaking world, the tiny light, sound and smell sensors from toilet tanks everywhere provide a veritable Mississippi of data of the most intimate sort on the carryings on of suspicious characters in all sorts of positions.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (the "FBI" as it's known to the cogniscenti) determined some time ago that those toilet paper dolls (TPDs) were actually tiny terrorists. All of them in the US were collected and interned in a camp near Slufoot, New Mexico. This was done without violence, mostly, although a few had to be shot for resisting arrest or as a warning to the others that resistance was futile.

I know this because the FBI has a facility here in Pocatello. It was deeply involved in the TPD round-up after the FBI office in Boise realized that "TPD" is kinda like "WMD" and we all know what that means. Anyway, the TPDs are not suffering anymore than anyone else in Slufoot. They are well kept in clean, airy, buildings with running water and nearly adequate food.

I'd post links, but pictures are not encouraged and the operation ("Operation TPD Roundup") was kept very, very secret so that the American People wouldn't panic or something.